


Finding a Place to Call Home

by MateriaFlower1_1



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Time Loop, Time Skips, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 10:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14376459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MateriaFlower1_1/pseuds/MateriaFlower1_1
Summary: Link has finally returned from Termina after saving their world from the apocalypse that was nigh, freeing them and himself from purgatory. Upon reaching the realm of Hyrule however, things are different. Too different. Something is wrong with the world, the people, the forests. Just how long was Link away for?





	Finding a Place to Call Home

**Author's Note:**

> I just got this idea one day and I was like well. That's sad. So naturally, I decided to write it down!
> 
> This piece is inspired by the song 'Lovers Mask' - please, go to our good friend Google to inquire. I highly recommend it as I haven't ever heard a remix of any video game music quite this amazing! So yep, I urge you with all my might.
> 
> Also, **really important note**: in this writing, Link left when he was 21 to go to Termina, so just imagine Adult Link saving Termina instead! It… You'll see.

Link ran, fast and hard through the Forest; he'd called his longest, most steadfast friend Epona in the storm and driving rain, but she hadn't come. Probably spooked by the tumultuous weather. The tall, leering trees leaked rivers of freezing water onto his head and back, the green tunic he wore had long since become almost black, clinging to his skin like a starved leech. The emerald forest was illuminated by incredulously bright flashes of lightning; bolts streaking down across the sky from the heavens. They threatened to singe anything in their wicked reach, as though the Goddesses were angry with the world.

Until recently, Link had been in a world that was ending. That he had watched end countless times, feeling the pain wrack his bones as they were crushed somehow, under the heat that melted away his skin and the unbearable pull of the moon destroying his very soul. The moon that was always falling towards them all. He thought it would drive him mad, seeing the people he'd formed bonds with die, over and over again. Watch the relationships he'd formed with the Terminians dissolved every three days, forming differently every time he lived that loop again. Building the friendships that only he knew about. He felt like he was manipulating people sometimes, and just truly alone at others. Sometimes, all he'd wanted to do was simply sit in the field, in the trees that were just like the home he'd grown up in, and pretend that this wasn't happening. That he wasn't responsible for saving another world.

Then he'd remember that there was a world counting on him, and he had a duty to keep them alive.

It was Anju and Kafei that truly drove him to carry on. After leaving Termina, Link felt stirred by the scene of Anju and Kafei meeting at their life's end. They were kept together by true love and determined to stay together, even until the very last moment of their lives. They accepted it with such grace that he couldn't even comprehend that level of unity anymore. Watching it over and over again, every three days of the purgatory he had fallen into made Link feel a yearning for someone he hadn't seen in what felt like a very, very, long time. The true love they possessed was an unmatched power, it distracted the pair from the end of their lives and gave them comfort in a time of desperate need; Anju's faith in Kafei was undoubtedly the strongest force Link had ever seen. A force Link himself had once possessed himself, seemingly aeons ago.

These thoughts raced through Link's head as he sped through the forest which he had once known so well. He stopped in his path; this was where the temple where he had spent so many hours with Saria should've been. But no trace of the mansion survived save a few, haphazardly placed, decrepit bricks. They were browned by age and blanketed with moss and chewed by wildlife. If he looked very closely, he could see the outline of the main chamber, perhaps. He could remember fighting the Poe Sisters in that temple, and the final one who haunted him in that room. And then to be shortly faced with Phantom Ganondorf... He'd been too young. Far too young to comprehend all of it. But what had happened to this place? And why? What had happened in the three days he had been away?

Running on once more, he charged in the direction of the Kokiri Forest at breakneck speed, but he was met with the same phenomenon. There was barely anything left. The pond before the Deku Tree's grove was flooded, completely destroying the shop and the surrounding houses. He looked nervously into the Deku Tree's grove, the place where it all started. Not even the stump of the Deku Tree remained. A thought struck him. His house. He was desperate to get back to the Castle but... he had to look at the place he'd grown up in. It was as though an inexplicable urge took over his body, pulling him towards the glorified tree house. He cautiously climbed the rickety ladder. It felt as familiar to him as it was strange. He was transported back into his childhood's body. The etchings on the walls, the childish drawings and... the bed. So small. Still unmade. He'd never come back here since he was sent back in time, instead living and working in the Castle. The last time Link slept in that bed, he was but 11, too young to be given the burdens that were thrust upon him. The Goddesses had not been kind to him, and sending a thunderstorm like this to greet him like this was surely another cruel joke. It had to be their final.

Something caught his eye on the table. He looked closely, crouching down to let the very limited light hit the thing... no, the body. A small body, curled up on the table. It was the skeleton of a woman, legs curled into her body and both hands making a tiny pillow under her head. From her back came small, fine wings hardened and with a slight blue tinge. A fairy. Could it... could it be...?

Link cried out in anguish and pain, louder than he would've liked to admit, and he ran far away from that cursed tree house and turned the other way, running as fast as he could push himself towards the castle. The castle where the only person he loved in this world was left. Mud splashed up his legs, the rain drove into his eyes and down his back in a pounding river. The trees thinned themselves out and finally, there was no shelter from the rain and nothing to pour it down from the heavens in great, dark funnels.

The expanse of Hyrule field before him was daunting and it somehow seemed unfamiliar. Link took off once more, ignoring the freezing of his extremities and the bitter numbness that came with it. His tender feet splashed against the puddles, frozen arms pumping a fast and steady rhythm.

Looking up to the dark sky, he couldn't help but reminisce about Termina, about the imminent death they all were fated to have and the defiance they showed it. Seeing no moon in the sky, Link felt terror; the Terminian moon with its leering grin and malevolent eyes that eternally glared down at the earth still haunted the reaches of his mind. The corners that lacked the slowly receding courage allowed doubt and fear to seep in with their tendrils of malice.

Link neared the grand structure that could only be the castle, its towering peaks familiar yet somewhat foreign. This is not how he'd imagined coming home, wherever that was. No, home was with her. Home was with Zelda. The tall, pointed spire in the centre of a collection of towers became taller and taller, the structure reminded him somewhat of Termina's quadrant like world.

After what felt like hours of running, Link was in Castle Town, but it was different. How could so much have changed in the three days he was away for? How had the moat disappeared and Castle Town be so… different? Ignoring the strange looks he received from the villagers still around at this time of night in the ominous storm, Link ran through the Town in as straight a line as he could, trying his hardest to navigate his way through this new land the best that he could manage.

Finally. Finally, Link had made it to the castle. Speeding his way through the gates, Link made his way to the entrance hall, only to be stopped by guards when he arrived there. The guard asked him something in a foreign tongue, something Link couldn't hope to understand, as the same guard and another tried to restrain him but ultimately failed.

"Let go of me!" Link cried, shaking the guards off himself. He was surprised at his tone of voice, it was angry – a feeling he had never felt this keenly since the adulthood he had relinquished to gain this new one… But he tried not to think of that time, it would bring back too many stolen and painful memories of friends he never truly made and lives that were never truly born.

The guards stared at him, a puzzled look crossing both of their faces. Link had garnered a fair amount of attention now as many people crowded around him, all speaking in the foreign language. Perhaps he had stumbled into the wrong country? After all, there were many other countries in the large world. There must've been others that felt like Hyrule.

Another person was coming to see him, but Link could tell they were different, they had a whole entourage of people trailing after them and the people parted for her like the Goddesses would part waves.

"Who are you?" They asked, in his Hylian. Link looked up.

Zelda. It was finally her.

"Zelda." Link replied, breathing a sigh of relief and leaning towards her in the guard's slackening holds. "What happened here?" He asked, not really taking in her appearance, rather basking in her presence.

"What on Hyrule could you mean? Nothing has happened here. How do you know me well enough to address me by my first name? And why must you speak in the archaic form of Hylian?" She asked in the calmest flurry he'd ever seen.

Link noticed something was wrong. Her voice was cooler, different from the bashful Zelda he knew. Her eyes. They were a different shade of blue, not as crystalline as the doe-eyed Zelda he knew. Her face was longer and sharper. Even her hair was different, no longer was it gold or did it curl down her back, it was instead honey coloured and straight, plaited together in places. She was even shorter than the Zelda he knew, and her clothing was far from the pink shades he had come to love. Well, tolerate.

"What… What happened?" Link asked, sinking to his knees in defeat, the guards releasing his wrists with a nod from the icy Queen before him. He could feel the Triforce begin to burn on the back of his hand as the magic within him began to bubble under his frozen exterior. He heard people gasp and step back as the burning sensation faded, his insides calming once more and the tumble of turbulent emotions settling down.

"Come." She instructed. Link took her awaiting hand, gloved and delicate but with a promise of strength, and stood, almost letting himself be dragged along. After being led by this… woman – Link didn't even know her name – for a while, he felt himself be sat down in a seat, he could hear the crackling fire before him. Red, lavish carpets spread under his soaked, brown boots; huge tapestries hung from the grey stone walls. His confusion grew when he saw that he was in fact displayed in one of them, along with the other Sages he never actually came to know in this life.

"Tell me your name." The woman asked, sitting in the chair next to him with a large book resting on her purple clothed lap. Purple – the Zelda he knew disliked the colour purple, but wore it as a patronage to her mother, who loved the colour.

"Link. Link of the Kokiri." He replied, daring to meet the eyes of this… imposter. The woman sighed and nodded, as though she had been expecting this answer. Of course she would – Link noted with irony – she was 'Zelda'.

"How long have you been away for, Link?" The other Zelda asked, her tone suddenly empathetic and almost… pitying?

"I was away for _three days_." Link replied with a tongue as sharp as the bramble's he'd grown up amongst. He just wanted to know where he was and where Zelda was.

"No. You have been away for three hundred years." She replied, the pity in her expression now very apt. And all too much.

He can't have been away for three hundred years! He was still alive. But if he really had, it would make sense; this foreign, alien land truly was his home – in the future. This was the future he never should've lived to see. But Zelda… this meant that she was…

"She's dead." Link stated, his voice devoid of emotion. He felt numb, cold, and empty. Devoid of all feelings.

The other Zelda nodded mutely, opening the book that rested on her lap with delicate, gloved hands. That almost resembled his own. She flipped through the well-read tome with easy, quickly navigating her way through the browning pages.

"Here." She said, showing him two pages. On it, was a depiction of him – from when he killed the beast, Ganon. Zelda was behind him, along with all the other Sages and… Navi, the one friend for whom he'd set out on his three hundred years long quest, the reason why he'd volunteered himself for the Army's need. The skeleton in his Kokiri home... it was her. Epona never came, because she no longer existed. A lump formed in his throat, hard and unsurpassable with every swallow. A pain settled around his heart and squeezed. So, this is was what grief felt like. This, is truly what rock bottom was. The Goddess couldn't have any more horrible jokes left up their sleeve. Could they?

Zelda turned the page gently and pressed the book into Link's palms, letting him read what it had to say. Link read it all with ease, the book was still in his Hylian after all. But the emotional toll it took... He was still so shocked, so numb and so much in pain that tears were beyond him. A pang of anger ran through his body as he read further into the life of his Zelda. All the turbulence that she experienced when he wasn't there by her side to comfort her. He never should've left. She asked him not to leave and he didn't listen. The reports from islands to the far south-east of Hyrule were becoming more desperate as time passed until they had no choice but to send a scout ahead. Link was the head of the Army, and he had someone to look for, someone for whom he'd scour the world. And so he did. He fell into Termina and they thought he never returned, dead somewhere along the path.

"She really went through all this trouble? For me?" Link asked, disbelievingly, the lack of emotion in his voice hurting him. He just had no words to describe the love he still felt for Zelda. Now he understood how Anju and Kafei could face the end of the world together. The other Zelda nodded, a small smile growing on her face.

"Yes. My great-great-grandmother truly did love you." She smiled. "She fought with all her might to save your daughter and to remain unmarried; she believed that you would come back, no matter how many times she was told otherwise."

Link could see the resemblance slowly surfacing, her lips were as rosy as his Zelda's, her skin tone identical. But her hands… they were his. Worn and rough under the white gloves, with shorter fingers too, never knowing the always peachy soft skin that his Zelda had had.

"And I love her." Link replied, allowing the ghost of a smile to grace his lips, something that hadn't happened in over three hundred years. He'd planned to propose to her when he got back. Happy visions of a different life quickly flitted before his eyes... But the guilt quickly struck and his smile slipped away like the rain falling outside. He promised her he'd be back. He told her he'd only be gone for a year at most, and she understood his intense desire to find his friend. He promised they'd be married when he returned, and she prepared the speech announcing it, waiting until he came home to deliver it. But he never came back. He broke his promise.

"I am sure that when I was younger I never aspired to meet my ancestor, even if I had always wondered what did happen to our beloved Hero of Time." Zelda replied with a coy smile, her sense of humour similar to his Zelda's, he noted.

Link's smile faded, his thoughts turned back to the adventure he had left on aged just twenty-one.

"I will tell you. Perhaps you should note it down. I shall correct the errors in your version of my quest too." Link said, his voice reverting to a tone devoid of character. Despite his internal reluctance, someone should know this. Who better than his own descendant?

* * *

Eventually, Link's story was noted down to the last detail; his epic quest of astounding length and nature recorded for all time. Zelda had written it down with meticulous detail, her handwriting neat and beautiful and something he'd not seen in a long time. Link had made her promise to keep his second quest a secret for only the Royal family so that someday, another Link and Zelda would meet and their tale may not have such a tragic end as his. After directing him to one of the many spare rooms the new Hyrule castle had to offer and returning all the equipment that Link had left in the armoury all those years ago, Zelda had wished him good night and had returned to her bed in a pensive mood after hearing her ancestor's heartbreaking tale.

But Link did not go to sleep. In the dark depths of this never-ending night, when the rain had lulled significantly but not stopped, Link snuck out of the castle and away from the painful reminders of the life he never lived.

**Z** ooming straight to the Temple of Time, his old haunt, Link wandered in melancholy, his own thoughts all the company he had and all the company he needed. He did feel terrible for leaving his descendant all alone after just reuniting with her, but if she was anything like as close to his Zelda as Link thought she resembled, then she might just understand completely.

**E** ntering the Temple of Time, Link noted that this place too was tainted by the ever-flowing current of time. Just like his Zelda had said, _Time passes, people move... Like a river's flow, it never ends._ She was right. She was right about his quest being foolish too, in some ways. Link hadn't found Navi, but not it made sense why. And he would regret that for as long as he lived. If he'd stayed… the possibilities with Zelda would've been endless. He would've seen his daughter grow up, maybe even see her have grandchildren. He could've prevented Zelda's early death too, they could've lived together in the peace that Link had so desperately fought for.

**L** ink didn't know how long he sat in the temple, it could've been days for all he knew; even years at the current rate. Following his map he had 'lifted' from the castle, Link made his way back to the castle, this time taking the opportunity to play Epona's Song with some grass he had found. He decided to leave his Ocarina with the new Zelda for the many families that would descend from him. To his surprise, a horse came - slightly shorter than his Epona, but coloured just the same. He looked into her eyes and he could almost see the girl he knew in them. He apologised, holding his head close to hers, and felt the world around him melt away for a moment, hearing the voices of Zelda and Saria and Navi and all his friends echo around him. But the rain got heavier and pulled him violently from his thoughts. He looked into Epona's eyes and saw the sadness that mirrored his own. He couldn't tell anymore if his face was wet with tears or the rain. Mounting Epona for the last time he ever would, even if it wasn't quite his girl, Link rode at a slow pace across the wide field, lit with the gentle colours of dawn, the dew splashing up Epona's legs as she walked. Finally, Link reached his destination. With a long, drawn-out goodbye, he finally saw Epona off. The last of his friends had left him, his faithful mare going out into this new, strange world. Link hoped she'd have a happy life, for she had done more than most horses could ever dream to accomplish. Now she was gone, Link missed her company a bit. But he tried to ignore that feeling. Surely she would be better alone. Link slunk back to the Kokiri forest, or what remained of it. Climbing back into his old house, Link began his eternal wait for death to claim him, his regrets from a missed life raw and grating on his every thought. He was surrounded by his childhood, the one he never grew out of the first time around - Navi, his pictures of the bosses he'd fought as a child, and the still unmade bed. Centuries passed once more and death refused to collect its prize, leaving him in a perpetual purgatory.

**D** efeat. Link hadn't been defeated before. Since he'd come back from Termina four hundred years ago, Link had technically died soon after, yet his regrets gave Link a new form. He was a Stalfoes, the price of wandering into the Lost Woods one last time. The Goddesses had not been kind to him, but maybe that was the price of saving the world from its fate twice. But then, the twilight had come. Link was transformed into a golden wolf – the colour of Zelda's hair Link noted with appreciation – and began to roam into the new Hyrule, one he'd not been in for four hundred years. His body was split into seven sections – blue and green and red and orange and purple and pink and gold - he could feel his soul being torn apart and his Triforce essence being ripped away. So the time had come for another Hero to be born? So be it. If the Goddesses will it so. Each section of his body, with a different element of the Sages inside, fought this new hero, so alike in his image, and every time the new hero would best him. Maybe his time for him to move on was nigh.

**A** lone after every other of his incarnations had been bested, Link's seventh section of soul awaited the new Link with eagerness. This last section of his body, this pink 'Time' section felt the wasting away of time the keenest. The days dragged on and on, when finally the young hero who resembled him so greatly through a trick of the Goddesses, came to him. Link taught the young hero the last of his talents. And finally, he could feel the gentle pull of death. With one last look into the Hero's eyes, Link gave him his final message. _A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it hath courage. Go forth, my son, seek your battle and avenge thy maiden and take her for your own._

**Zelda**. She smiled at him, her voice beautiful as ever, looking just like the moment he'd fallen in love with her, truly - when they were united in the sky after surviving Ganon together. Her long golden hair flowing in the blinding light; her full, dewy pink lips curled into a sad smile; her doe-like sapphire eyes shimmering with joy and unshed tears. It was good to be home.

_"Link."_

 


End file.
